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Things were pretty slow at the doctor’s office, so Vesta decided to run into the pharmacy and pick up her prescription. Even though she liked to proclaim she was as healthy as a woman half her age or less, she still was plagued with little aches and pains from time to time. Lucky for her then that her daughter had married a fine doctor, who, even though he sometimes liked to express his desire for her expedient expiration, still tried to make sure she lived as long and as happy a life as he could manage in his medical wisdom and expertise.

She walked into the pharmacy on Downing Street now and the first person she saw was Scarlett Canyon. The woman’s puffy lips puffed some more, and her cat’s eyes flashed even more catty than usual when she spotted her mortal enemy. She smiled.

“Oh, hi, Vesta, darling,” she said in unctuous tones that reeked of insincerity. “So nice to see you.”

“Scarlett,” Vesta grunted unhappily. For a moment she debated turning around and walking out again, but Scarlet had seen her, and so had the half a dozen other customers waiting in line, so she forced herself to close the door behind her and proceed inside.

“So what’s ailing you?” asked Scarlett. “Heart palpitations? Wonky bladder? Cancer?”

“None of the above,” said Vesta, carefully hiding her prescription behind her back. “How about you? Hemorrhoids? Flatulence? Venereal disease?”

Scarlett laughed a raucous laugh.“Oh, Vesta. You’re such a hoot!”

Blanche Captor, one of the women in front of them in line, turned and said in a low voice,“Did you hear what happened to Pamela Witherspoon last night?”

Immediately all eyes turned to her. There’s nothing like small-town gossip to draw people closer together. Even Vesta and Scarlett momentarily forgot their feud as they turned their attention to Blanche, a woman with cleavage as deep as her desire to gossip.

“She accosted your son last night, Vesta.”

“Alec? What do you mean?” asked Vesta. She knew that her son was a real catch, being a widower with a steady job and all, but she could hardly imagine Pamela Witherspoon throwing herself in his arms. Alec might be a catch, but even though his mother, she was keenly aware her son wasn’t exactly a Brad Pitt or Chris Hemsworth..

“She said she was being attacked, but when Chief Alec went to look for her attacker, he was nowhere to be found!”

“An attacker!” said Ida Baumgartner excitedly. She was one of Tex’s regulars.

Blanche nodded.“By the park. Late last night.”

“I heard it was a rapist,” said Marcie, who was Vesta’s neighbor. “And the Chief barely managed to save her. Pamela’s clothes were all torn and tattered, and by the time she fell into the Chief’s arms, she was only half dressed.”

“A half-naked Pamela Witherspoon in the arms of a widower. Now really,” said Scarlett, clucking her tongue with delight.

“Oh, baloney,” said the pharmacist, a no-nonsense older gentleman answering to the improbable name of Rory Suds. “Pamela was in here first thing this morning, and she told me the whole story.” All attention now focused on the pharmacist, who seemed to bask in it. “It wasn’t just a man she saw. It was a zombie!”

“A zombie!” said Scarlett, clutching her not inconsiderable chest.

“Zombies don’t exist, Rory,” said Marcie. “Everybody knows that.”

“Well, she swore up and down that that was what she saw: a real live zombie.”

“That’s a contradiction in terms,” said Vesta. “Zombies, as a rule, are dead.”

“It is possible,” said Blanche, “that Pamela had been drinking. I walked past St. John’s Church the other day and saw her coming out with Victor Ball.” She gave her audience a meaningful look, and they all gasped in shock once more.

The whole town knew Victor Ball as a recovering alcoholic, and to be seen with him was as much as an admission of guilt—of having issues with the bottle oneself.

“Victor is sober now,” said Vesta. “He told me so.”

“But he’s still going to Father Reilly’s AA meetings,” said Scarlett. “And so, apparently, is Pamela Witherspoon.”

Lips were pressed together, and silent looks exchanged. It was determined therefore, and writ large in the town’s lore, that Pamela Witherspoon was a raging alcoholic who had taken to accosting police chiefs in the middle of the night, half-naked and rambling on about non-existing zombies.

Rory Suds shook his grizzled head, quickly worked his way through the line of customers, and when it was finally Scarlett’s turn, she cleared her voice, and said, clear as a bell, “My usual prescription for the contraceptive pill, Rory.”

Vesta’s head jerked up, as if stung. “Now Scarlet, really,” she said. “You’re not still trying to convince me you’re on the pill, are you?”

“I’m not trying to convince you of anything,” said Scarlett with a little laugh. “I’m on the pill, that’s a fact.”

“But you’re my age! You passed menopause two or three decades ago!”